First meeting of the new CEC Steering Committee

03 May 2013 | News story

Juliane Zeidler, CEC Chair, reports on a meeting near IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, where the new Steering Committee created an action plan.

Dear CEC members,

Excitingly the new Steering Committee met for the first time at the end of January in Rolle, near Gland, in Switzerland. We held discussions on strategic activities which will make the CEC Programme 2013-2016 come to fruition in harmonisation with the IUCN One Programme. Here we also discussed ideas about the new CEC structure – and how we as the IUCN CEC community, can pool our resources in a way that makes the CEC Programme successful over the next few years. Changes are foreseen – and will hopefully be implemented over the coming year.

We had a great and highly productive meeting! I am very pleased to share with you the Steering Committee Report, which details our discussions.

Out of this Steering Committee Meeting came an Action Plan to mobilise support for the IUCN CEC Programme.

The greatest action points of the plan include support to the CBD Secretariat and countries to achieve especially (but not only) Aichi Target 1, including through expanding on the Love not Loss campaign, supporting the design of learning processes for capacity building in the broader IUCN, building on the excellent CEC capacity development expertise, and supporting the World Parks Congress taking place in 2014.

Some cutting-edge learning and communication techniques will look at e-learning and using social media to mobilize for action.

We dedicated specific funds for two regional outreach priorities, i.e. in China and Meso- and South America.

In addition to myself as Chair, the meeting was attended by Nancy Colleton, IUCN CEC Deputy Chair, and all of the members our new IUCN CEC Steering Committee, including David Ainsworth, Wendy Goldstein, Frits Hesselink, Grace Mwaura, Louisa Nakanuku-Diggs, Hanying Li and Keith Wheeler. Ex-Officio participants included Justine Braby and Cecilia Nizzola-Tabja. You can meet the team here >>